Sic Semper Tyrannis
by girl-like-substance
Summary: Colchester, 102CE. Menahem, a scholar from Judaea, has settled down in Roman Britannia to make a study of the local wildlife. Which means that, when a three-headed dragon flies in out of the west, he's the closest thing to an expert that the local authorities can find – and that means he's the one who has to figure out what to do about it. [Yuletide fic for Cavespider 17.]


There's trouble bearing down on Camulodunum. A very particular kind of trouble: three heads, six wings, a string of deaths in the outlying villages. The minute Menahem sees Gaius at the door of his office just off the Cardo Maximus, he knows what he's come for.

"Took you long enough," he says, sparing him a quick glance as he enters. "Hang on. Hab? Down."

Habasselet dips her heavy head immediately and relaxes down into her coils, spreading out on the scratched flagstones. Menahem gives her a quick pat – thump, really; even these small Brittonic onix struggle to feel anything less through their stone skin – and straightens up, dusting off his hands.

"Good to see you too, doctor," says Gaius dryly, holding the door for his grizzled old arcanine. "I suppose you've heard the rumours."

Menahem pauses – gathers an appropriately withering look – fires it off across the room, where it sinks into Gaius' calm without effect.

"I'll take that as a yes, then." Gaius stops in the middle of the room, looks at him expectantly. "Can we talk?"

"Can't see that I have much choice about it." Menahem sighs and waves him over to the office part of the office, tucked away behind a wooden screen in the corner. Much of the room is left clear, the better for his work; the office did cover a little more space, but he's spent the past three months working with Habassalet, cataloguing the differences between her and her vast desert cousins, and after the first few breakages he decided to move everything as far away from her tail as possible. "Here, take a seat. And you," he calls, shooting a glance at Habassalet. "Don't you move, or it's back to the mountains with you."

Her only response is a wilful flick of the tail. Menahem sighs again and turns back to Gaius.

"What are you waiting for, a written invitation? Sit down, man."

He pulls his own stool out from behind the desk and takes a seat himself, doing his best to hide the stiffness in his movements. How is one to grow old in this abominable province? The chill and the damp put an ache in his bones that he just can't shift.

"We count five reported deaths so far," says Gaius, sitting opposite him with enviable ease. Say what you like about the legions – and Menahem frequently does – but they do leave a man in the sort of shape that lets him weather the Brittonic rain. "I suspect there are others that we haven't heard of yet. You know how the Britons are."

"Trinovantes," corrects Menahem. "And yes, there are others. I've heard of seven, all told. A hunter from the village north of the river found the remains of two others in the woods."

Gaius clicks his tongue. His arcanine, lying at his feet, looks up at the sound, but settles down again when Gaius reaches down to scratch between his ears.

"We have _got_ to get our intelligence sorted out," he mutters, exasperated. "Don't suppose you've got anything on the murder down by the east gate while you're at it, eh?"

"Try Cassius Flavius, on the corner by the market."

"Wait, really?"

Menahem gives him a look.

"No, you dolt," he says. "Of course not."

"Right. Right." Gaius shakes his head. "Look – this is actually why I'm here. You're the closest thing to an expert we have, and the Britons are much happier to talk to you than to me."

Menahem doesn't bother to correct him this time. He only has so much energy to spare on imperial idiocy.

"You want me to investigate?" he asks.

"You just need to find it," says Gaius, looking serious. "Find this thing, tell us what it is and how to beat it. Then we send in some of our men to bring the beast down. Before it figures out that there's prey going up and down the road to Londinium. I don't think I need to tell you what it would mean if one of the service stations got knocked out."

Trouble, bluntly. But mostly for other people. And since Menahem's position here is entirely unofficial, he doesn't really see delayed messages as his problem. Frankly, the amount of time Gaius has taken up today is already too long; his great natural history won't write itself.

Still. Three heads, six wings, a string of deaths. How many opportunities is he likely to get to study a hydreigon in the wild?

"I suppose I would like a closer look at it," he admits. "It may prove interesting. From a natural philosophical viewpoint."

Gaius brightens up. Menahem hadn't realised quite how stressed he looked until now.

"Excellent," he says. "So, any preliminary guesses as to what sort of monster we're dealing with?"

Menahem smiles his humourless old smile.

"No," he lies. "I'm going to need further information."

He _will_ tell them. The hydregion will need removing, after all, and it's probably going to take legionary firepower. Legio XX has some powerful ice elementals in the monster auxilia that might do the trick.

But first, he wants to see this thing with his own eyes. And he has an idea or two about how he might manage that.

"None at all?" Gaius scowls. "_Nothing_ from the great natural historian?"

"No," says Menahem, refusing to rise to it. "Nothing. Give me a few days to investigate. Besides, what about the great military scouts? Don't your speculatores have anything for you?"

Gaius coughs.

"Yes, well, you know. They may not have actually … seen the beast. And, ah, our usual interpreter – well, d'you know, I think a few days are perfectly reasonable, actually." He stands up, a little too fast. His arcanine rises with him, tongue lolling between its yellowed fangs. "Will you need transport? We can provide you with a horse. Or a carriage, if―"

"If I'm too old to ride?" asks Menahem acidly. "No thank you, centurio. I'm sure I can drag my ancient bones out to meet my contacts without your charity."

"Splendid," says Gaius, clapping his hands together with a strained sort of cheer. "I'll, ah … I'll be back tomorrow, then. For an update."

Menahem snorts.

"I'll contact you," he says. "You'll look pretty stupid standing around here waiting for a man still out in the field."

"Right you are, doctor." Gaius smiles stiffly. "Keep me informed."

"I will." Menahem stands up, trying to handle the movement like a man whose spine still bends properly. "If that's all, centurio, I'm sure there's a wagon travelling too fast in the wrong lane that needs your expert attention."

For a moment, Gaius looks like he might snap at him, but in the end he just sighs again and shakes his head.

"I'm sure," he says. "Well, ah, thanks for your assistance, doctor. Vale."

Menahem nods and walks out to the office floor; he stops by Habassalet, and she raises her head from her coils to join him in watching Gaius leave.

"He wants me to find that hydreigon," he explains, as the door closes on the arcanine's fluffy tail. "I don't suppose you feel like a walk in the woods?"

Habasselet snaps her jaws in some obscure onix gesture. It sounds a little like a small house falling down.

Menahem sighs.

"Well, I suppose that's the closest to intelligent conversation I'll get today," he mutters, and begins to gather his things.

* * *

Beritanonun is a long name for a small place, several tedious hours' travel through the outlying towns and villages, past the usual ring of country villas and peasant farms. Menahem did hire a cart, in the end – it's not that Gaius was right, he would insist, it's just that it's more efficient to save his strength for the walk in the woods – but even so, this drearily green landscape seems to go on forever. Lush and damp and about as appealing as the back end of a gogoat.

Still. They make good enough time, and the sun is still high when the village comes into view, a collection of dismal little houses clinging tenaciously to the edge of the forest like tubby mushrooms. Mostly circular, in a place like this; it's the sort of settlement into which Roman culture – and its associated square buildings – have never really managed to penetrate.

Menahem sits there and stares at it for a few seconds, ignoring the crowd of curious children who've come out to stare at the foreigner and the onix. Then he sighs and climbs slowly down from the cart.

"All right, all right, clear me a damn path," he mutters, and Habasselet obliges with just a tad too much enthusiasm, slithering on ahead and lashing out with her horn to drive the children back. Menahem follows closely behind her, letting the children's chattered questions wash over him without actually entering his ears. They fall away soon enough, when it becomes clear where he's going: the other side of town and out the other side, where – a suitable distance from all the others – there is one last hut, smaller and smoke-blackened and set in the midst of a deadly-looking herb garden. (Wolfsbane. Hemlock. A tuft of striated leaves that must be one of those stringy Brittonic oddish, sleeping away the day until the moon rises.)

This used to be Greimme's house. But she died a little before Menahem arrived in this green and unpleasant land, and in the years since it's belonged to her erstwhile apprentice, Scáthach. Skilled huntress, village witch – and an extremely valuable source of captive monsters. It was her who first caught Habasselet, back when Menahem decided to make a proper study of mossy Brittonic onix.

"Wait here," Menahem says, pointing to a spot where Habasselet probably won't break anything; she pauses for just long enough to make it clear that she's not a tame monster and is only doing this as a favour, then obeys, curling up rebelliously close to Scáthach's fence. "Good."

He lifts his hand to knock, but the door opens before his knuckles make contact with it, to reveal a young woman with braided red hair and a few more of those complex Brittonic tattoos than Menahem is entirely convinced are reasonable or necessary.

"I thought it must be you," she says, without preamble. "Nobody else makes this much of a bloody racket."

Menahem isn't a smiley sort of person, but he almost smiles then, with a misanthrope's satisfaction in finding someone else as sour as they are. The symmetry of it always amuses him: he's from Judaea, she's from Britannia – opposite ends of the empire, and yet somehow they both turned out with a scathing disdain for everyone else they meet.

"Well, I thought I should make an effort," he says, switching from Latin to Brittonic. "Have you heard about the dragon?"

"Course I have," she says. "Who d'you think I am, old man? Got my finger on the pulse out here." She shifts her weight onto her back foot, gives him an appraising sort of look. "Lemme guess. The nobs in Camulodunon want it removed, you wanna poke it with a stick and write it up in your scroll."

She uses the native form of the name, rather than the Latinised _Camulodunum_. Excellent.

"More or less," admits Menahem. "Will you help?"

A pause. Scáthach twists her lower lip between her fingers.

"Yeah, all right," she sighs. "In my interest too, innit. Technically my job an' all." She steps out of the hut and shuts the door behind her. "You ready for a trip? Fair warnin', I ain't gonna go slow for you."

Menahem indicates the saddlebags he slung around Habasselet's neck before leaving.

"I came prepared for a couple of days at least."

Scáthach grins a grin as sharp and unpleasant as the leaf-shaped blade she wears on her hip.

"Nice," she says. "C'mon then, old man. Let's go catch a bloody dragon."

* * *

You just don't get forests like these back home. It's deep and dark and still damp from last night's rain, the loam soft beneath Menahem's shoes. Previous walks in the woods have taught him that he needs to bring a staff to steady himself as he goes, but Scáthach – dressed like a barbarian man in her leather jacket and breeches – trips lightly through the undergrowth without apparently noticing the uneven terrain.

Quiet. Birdsong, the odd drip of water onto leaves. The heavy squelching of Habasselet dragging herself through the mud. Menahem doesn't doubt that Scáthach's partner is following too, but she's the sort of creature that you don't see until three seconds after she's killed you.

"You have ideas about where to look?" he asks, testing a patch of soil with his stick before stepping onto it.

"I found those two guys what died a few miles to the northeast," Scáthach replies, without taking her eyes off the surrounding woodland. "Let's start there. See what me and Cath can dig up."

"Right."

They keep walking, settling into a companionable silence. Once, a shadow twitches by overhead and Menahem looks up, but Cathubodua remains hidden. It's almost peaceful. Not home, of course, and there is the fact that he's walking into territory where people have, very recently, been killed by a massive dragon, but still, peaceful.

Besides – on the bright side, he'll very soon get to study a massive dragon.

"So," says Scáthach, after a while. "This dragon. It ain't one of ours. We get noivern sometimes from the Fens, and the odd dragonite off the Morimaru, but people are sayin' it's got three heads." She looks up then, tosses him a look as swift and sharp as an arrow. "What says the great natural historian?"

"I only know one three-headed dragon," replies Menahem truthfully. "Hydreigon. Very rare. Nobody knows where they come from, but there are reports that they fly in from the west." He curls his lip slightly. "Some say they're bad omens."

"Well, they turn up and a bunch of people die," says Scáthach pragmatically. "Sounds like a bad omen to me." She sniffs. "The west, eh? From the Gaelic lands across the water, is that it?"

He shakes his head. At his side, Habasselet ploughs stolidly through a bramble thicket, heedless of the scratching thorns.

"Further. They fly in from the west of Hibernia. Across the open ocean."

"Huh." She raises her eyebrows. "Didn't know there was anything out there."

"There's always something out there," says Menahem. "Three thousand miles east will take you to Lod, where I was born; I'm sure if you go three thousand miles west, you'll find another old man complaining in some other little town."

"And here we are, slap bang in the middle." Scáthach grins. "Nice bein' the centre of the world, innit?"

"I think the Romans might have something to say about that."

"I'm sure they do. Always got summin to say, them lot. And me, I'm happy to let 'em carry on without tellin' 'em nobody's listening."

Menahem's lips tighten slightly in the curdled beginnings of a smile. It's been decades since the last uprising, the one that saw Camulodunum burned to the ground beneath the hooves of the Iceni queen's rapidash; the Brittonic elite are thoroughly Romanised, and everyone else is more or less used to the imperial presence. But there's a part of him that remembers his own war, back in Judaea – the glorious early victories, the bloody infighting, the ignominious end – and he can't deny, it does his old heart good to know there are people out here in the sticks who bear Rome no love.

"You and me both, kid," he says, striking out again with renewed vigour. "You and me both."

* * *

When Scáthach first told him about the bodies in the woods, Menahem had assumed they were identifiable. He's seen animal attacks before, of course. Flygon and hippowdon sometimes came out of the desert when he was a boy, with predictable results, and in the years after the Jewish uprising, after he hung up his spear and begun his travels around the empire, he saw all kinds of people savaged by all kinds of beasts. It's an occupational hazard, given his chosen profession. Those who consult on matters of monsters need to be able to look dispassionately at a fairly comprehensively ruined body.

Still. He wasn't expecting _this_.

"Is this all?" he asks, looking down at the patch of stained grass and leaves. Bits of bone, a few fingers. A squishy brown thing that was doubtless never intended to see the outside of the human body, crawling with insects.

"That's all," Scáthach confirms, crouching to get a closer look. "I'm guessin' your hydreigon was feelin' hungry."

Menahem scowls. Partly at what she's said, partly because he's sort of jealous of how easily she can crouch. They've been walking for over an hour now, and it's all he can do not to sit down on Habasselet.

"How do you know there were two people?"

Without hesitating, Scáthach picks up two of the chunks of bone, holds them up for his inspection.

"Either two people, or one person with two heads," she says. "You only got one skull, and you only got one right eyebrow."

He doesn't ask how she came by such an intimate knowledge of the human skull, just grunts his acknowledgement. She straightens up, tossing the skull fragments down and looking around.

"How big is one of these things, old man?"

He shrugs.

"As big as a man, at least. Perhaps bigger. Big enough to eat two men, at least."

"Or women," says Scáthach. "But yeah, like I thought. Not big enough to eat two people and still fly afterwards."

She says it in a thoughtful sort of way that makes Menahem pause.

"You see something," he says. It's not a question.

"Yeah." She nods at a bush. It looks mostly normal to Menahem, but then, that's why he brought Scáthach. This is her field of expertise. "See that? The beast ate its fill and staggered off like a drunk. Made a right mess of the undergrowth." She turns to Menahem, that unpleasant grin flickering across her face. "Excitin' times, eh?"

"One way of putting it," he says, wondering how much more walking he's going to have to do today. "Just lead the way, kid."

"Well, don't sound too happy about it," she mutters, and stalks off into the undergrowth.

* * *

It's a lot of walking. Menahem sticks it out for as long as he can, dragging his old bones grimly along the trail of trampled vegetation, but finally he does have to stop and rest. Or rather Scáthach does: despite what she said about not going slow, she remarks that maybe they should take a break and sits down on a fallen log before he can argue.

He doesn't thank her. But when he eases himself down onto Habasselet's biggest segment, he gives Scáthach a brusque sort of nod, and she gives him one back.

* * *

The sun is low in the sky by the time they arrive. Menahem has long since settled into the kind of easy boredom that sees you through a long walk through dreary surroundings, and when Scáthach holds up her hand and eases her bow off her shoulder it takes him a minute to come back to himself.

"Hist," she says, her eyes fixed on something he can't see. "And get that bloody snake to stand still before all that grindin' gives us away."

Menahem nods and thumps Habasselet on the snout, just below her horn. She glares at him for a moment, crystalline eyes winking in the afternoon light, then whacks her tail petulantly into a tree trunk before settling down into stony immobility.

"Petty little bitch," mutters Scáthach, casting an evil look in her direction. "Right. Step right here, old man, and do it quiet, like."

Her tension is infectious; it's got Menahem strongly enough that he doesn't even think of disobeying. He steps closer and plants his stick, leaning down to follow Scáthach's pointing finger.

"There. That look like a hydreigon to you?"

Ahead, between the trees, Menahem sees a hollow in the earth, going down deep and packed with vegetation and scraps of fur and clothing. Nestled in it is a huge hump of black fur and blue scales; at first he can't quite figure out how it fits together, and then the parts settle in his vision and he sees legs, tails, six ragged wings – and three blunt, heavy heads.

It's huge. Like a bear or a rhydon: huge in an aggressive way, in a way that makes you instantly aware that this creature could damage you in a way that you would not recover from. Huge, and deadly, and very, very beautiful.

"Yes," he murmurs, unable to look away. "That's it. The first one seen in Europa for fifty years."

Scáthach's staring too; he isn't looking, but he can sense her attention, sense the arrow waiting half-nocked in her hands. He understands. The hydreigon is something else. Multi-headedness isn't uncommon among monsters, but he's never seen it on anything this big before. This is the sort of beast that looks like it should be carved in black stone on the shrine of someone's god.

"Looks like a nest," mutters Scáthach. "Dug it by itself. You can see the piles of earth banked up round the back and sides." She glances at him. "They make a new nest every day or stick to the one? Reckon it must have to move around to find enough food, big creature like that."

"I don't know," he admits. "Nobody's studied one before."

They keep staring. The beast shuffles in its sleep, its prime head snuffling quietly to itself.

"We gotta keep an eye on this," says Scáthach. "I say we send Cath back to Camulodunon for the legionaries. I'll camp out here. Make sure it don't run off." She pauses. "You stayin'? Guessin' you wanna study this thing."

"Of course I'm staying," retorts Menahem. "What do you take me for?"

"Someone too old to be lying down on the damp earth." She takes a swift, silent step back, motions for him to follow. "Come on. Got a tablet in those bags? You can put your learnin' to good use, write a message for Gaius Bignose and his bloody fun police."

Menahem lingers for a moment, eyes fixed on the hydreigon, then eases himself back upright and heads back towards Habasselet. He does have a tablet. Several, actually – which is good; even if he sends one back, he should have enough to record some preliminary observations. So little has been written. And he has so little time to add to it.

* * *

A quick scribble on his least favourite wax tablet (the last time he used one to send a message to Gaius, he never got it back) and Cathubodua swoops out of nowhere to collect it, unnervingly silent for a creature her size. Menahem does his best not to flinch as she snatches the tablet from his hand; he's never really liked decidueye. Apparently Scáthach killed her herself, ritually slitting her throat as a dartrix so that she would rise again with greater power. Menahem has a whole chapter in his natural history on the peculiarity of dartrix colonies and the way they peck their strongest members to death to create undead watchmen for the flock; still, red as nature is in tooth and claw, he doesn't really like to think of _people_ doing something like that.

She vanishes as swiftly as she appeared, leaving the rest of them to back off to a safe distance, where Scáthach installs herself in a tall tree with a view of the nest and answers Menahem's hissed questions in a tone of voice that suggests nobody has ever asked this much of anyone else in the history of the world.

"No, not like that. Yeah, kind of. Blue. I dunno, do I, it ain't movin'? Couple of cubits, I guess. Yeah, I can see that …"

Habasselet watches for a while, flicking her tail idly from side to side and thoroughly destroying some brambles, then snorts and lies down to sleep, bored. Overhead, the sun sinks with her, burying its face in the treeline.

"… you asked me that before, and the answer's the same, it's―"

Scáthach stops. Menahem looks up sharply, a cold fist clenching tight around his chest. She's sitting bolt upright on her branch, clutching stiffly at a knot in the trunk.

"What, ah … what is it?"

"It's wakin' up," she breathes, eyes wide. "By the gods, that's … that's big."

Menahem can't take his eyes off her face, as if he could see the hydreigon's movements written there. The tension of her tattooed brow. The stupefaction in the lines of her mouth.

God, he wishes he could get a bloody _look_.

"Holy hell."

"What?" he hisses. "What, in God's name?"

Scáthach pushes herself out from the branch, drops lightly to the ground. Her face is pale and drawn.

"Eggs," she says. "The bloody thing's laid eggs."

* * *

A whispered conference, muttered furiously back and forth above Habasselet's uncomprehending head.

"We can't let them destroy the nest."

"Can't we?"

"This is the only breeding hydreigon ever recorded! Do you have any idea what we could learn here?"

"… yeah, yeah, I take your point, Mr I'd-shag-natural-philosophy-if-I-could. Though I can't help but think that if we got our hands on an egg―"

"―we'd be able to study it as it grew, yes – I imagine that like most dragons, hydreigon pass through several evolutionary stages; I should like to―"

"I was thinkin' more along the lines of, raise ourselves a monster. You been up to Gannaractacus? The village chief raised a bunch of magikarp to adulthood, and okay, five of 'em went berserk, but the sixth one partnered with him! Now he's got a gyarados."

"Hm? Yes, yes, I suppose there are potential military applications―"

"Though if I'm bein' fair, I s'pose he did lose an arm. But you know what they say, no pain, no gain."

"―and of course, I can't deny that it would be satisfying to put one over on the Romans."

"That's the spirit, old man. Once a rebel, always a rebel, eh?"

"Hmph. I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Right, so you never got drunk and told me about when you and your friends tried to overthrow the Roman governor, then. Got it."

"That's – hmph. Never mind. Look, the hydreigon―"

"Oh sure, yeah, back to the matter at hand an' all."

"You agree with me?"

"I'm game if you are. Anything to put one over on old Bignose. 'Sides. It's for natural philosophy, ain't it?"

"Fine. Good. So, ah … how do we get an egg without ending up as disembodied skull fragments?"

And the whispers give way to silence.

* * *

This is not a good plan. But, well. Menahem has experience of both combat and working with monsters, and maybe, just maybe, they'll be able to make this work.

It's dark now – a proper dark, the dark of wild spaces. In Camulodunum, lamps will be shining from every other window; out here in the woods, there's nothing but the moonlight, shredded by the leaves overhead into silver scraps scattered across the loam. He can barely see Habasselet, waiting at his side for the signal.

Cathubodua can see in the dark, though. And now that she's back at Scáthach's side, that should be all they need.

Menahem takes a deep breath. He's too old for this nonsense. Regardless of how many legionaries he's put a spearhead in – and it is a definite non-zero quantity – there's a reason soldiers retire long before they get to his age. Should the hydreigon go for him, he's not getting out of the way before it takes off his head in one bite. And both of his hands in its other mouths, probably.

God. Half an hour ago he couldn't get over how beautiful it was. And yes, yes, it's a great and glorious testament to the creator's work, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that he's dealing with an animal that's been in the area for about nine days and already killed seven peop―

Cathubodua hoots in the distance. And Menahem takes another deep breath and whacks Habasselet round the back of the head.

"We're up," he says. "Come on. Time to see how tough you are."

She roars, a deafening stony sound like a small house collapsing, and surges forward through the undergrowth. Menahem follows as fast as he can – and there it is: there's the hydreigon, rearing up over its nest and whipping all three heads around to face the sudden threat. It roars back, a deep triple roar like a whole pride of lions all at once; Habasselet flinches, but just as Menahem thought, she's too proud and too stupid to back down. Her eyes gleam, her tail smashes a bush to matchsticks, and she thrusts her horn straight at the hydreigon's face – only to be knocked aside with a swingeing blow of its left head.

"Hab!" cries Menahem. "Legs!"

She's back up again in an instant, much faster than seems natural for a beast her size, and coiling up to sweep her tail around beneath the hydreigon's snarling heads. But the hydreigon's faster still: it jumps, hangs there with her ragged wings shivering, and spits a torrent of black flame from its central mouth. It hits with an almost physical weight, driving Habasselet back into her coils as her moss crisps and burns off her stone skin, and Menahem's heart sinks with her to the dirt. There's no way she can stand up to this thing. Another minute and she'll either run or the hydreigon will have cracked her clean open.

"Fall back!" he calls, raising his voice over the roar of the fire. "Come on! Lead her off!"

It's no use; she isn't trained, really, and she doesn't hear. Habasselet writhes out from beneath the flame, black with soot, and slithers weakly back towards the trees. The hydreigon lands behind her, almost knocking Menahem off his feet as its bulk settles onto the earth, and lunges for her tail with its prime head. He has about half a second to watch in abject horror as it yanks Habasselet back towards it before the hydreigon's left head locks its empty eyes on his, blue light dripping from its fangs―

A sudden streak of purple cuts the night in half, and the head snaps to the side, a glowing purple quill sprouting from its neck. The hydreigon drops Habasselet and turns, heads parting to scan all directions for the new threat – and there she is: Cathubodua, perched in a tree across the clearing with her wings bristling with glowing quills.

She moves. Somehow. It's a little too fast for Menahem to catch, and by the look of it too fast for the hydreigon either, but she moves, and more quills thump into the earth all around it. The hydreigon shrieks as if stabbed and moves to leap at her – but it falls back to the ground instantly, pinned in place by the quills nailing its shadow to the earth.

No time to stand around gawking: he's drawn it off the nest; it's on Scáthach to make use of the opening. Menahem hobbles off after Habasselet, almost tripping over his staff in his haste, and shuts his ears against the screeching and the roar of flames.

"Good work," he says, catching a glimpse of her in a flash of moonlight, huddled defensively within her coils. Looks okay. Scorched, but the hydreigon was trying to scare, not kill, and her stone skin was good protection. Besides, now he can record how long it takes for her moss to grow back. "You can stop, you know, it's pinned down now―"

The hydreigon shrieks again. And, from somewhere in the distance, three leonine voices roar back.

Menahem freezes.

How could he be so stupid? It laid eggs. It laid eggs, which means before it laid eggs, it mated – which means _there's a second goddamn hydreigon_.

"Hab!" he yells, thrusting his stick at her. "We have to go back!"

She gives him an incredulous sort of look. Behind them, Menahem hears strange, irregular wingbeats, as if of several pairs beating at once.

"_Now_," he growls, cuffing her round the back of the head in a gesture that undoubtedly hurts him far more than her. "Come on, before those two get themselves killed."

Habasselet hesitates – apparently she's far less loath to see the mean lady and her scary ghost owl killed than he is – but when he turns and heads back to the clearing, he thinks he hears her follow.

He bloody hopes he does, anyway, because he was right: the hydreigon is still writhing on the ground, trying to pull itself free from the pins in its shadow, but bearing down on them over the trees is another, missing one head but spewing blue plasma from the remaining two. Cathubodua screeches and takes to the air, wheeling up out of the way on spectral wings; down in the nest, Scáthach pauses, torn between keeping hold of the egg in her hands and unshouldering her bow.

Is Habassalet coming? Menahem hopes so, because if she isn't, then he's about to get himself killed. He lifts his staff, feeling the past return to him in heady waves as he switches his grip, and drives it like a spear into the back of the stricken hydreigon's prime head.

It screams and twists like a dying fish, heads lashing; the next thing he knows, he's on his back, stick gone and head spinning, with the hydreigon's face inches from his own breathing a rich rotten meat stink into his mouth―

Once, chasing a lead on a sceptile nest into the mountains of Thrace, Menahem was caught up in a rock slide that missed him by mere feet and left him trapped on some godforsaken hill for a week. He still remembers the impact of it – the sound, the fury, like one of the Thracians' gods slamming his cosmic fist down into the earth.

This is how Habassalet moves: that rock slide, but with intent, purpose, all its murderous weight placed behind a singular will. She ploughs into the hydreigon from nowhere and bowls it clean over, her heavy coils crushing it into the earth. Menahem sits up, heart pounding half out of his chest, and sees the two of them rolling incomprehensibly in the dirt, a mess of stone and scale and thrashing heads. And diving towards them―

"Hab! Up, now!"

She flicks her head up and meets the diving hydreigon horn-first with an impact that Menahem feels from several yards away. He scrambles to his feet with a speed he didn't know he still had, snatching his stick from the dirt, and backs off just as a tail scythes through the spot he was occupying a moment before.

God. No hope of controlling this fight now; it's an utter mess, the three monsters indistinguishable in the snarling dark. Cathubodua is firing quills from somewhere, but they aren't glowing and so God only knows what they're hitting.

"Got it!" Scáthach, materialising at his side with her arms full of egg. "C'mon, we gotta go. _Now_."

"Hab," he cries. "She's―"

No longer an issue, as it happens: the hydreigon are both back on their feet, Habassalet twitching weakly in the dirt beneath them. The one missing the head turns and spits flame across the clearing, presumably flushing out Cathubodua; the other spreads its heads and its wings and takes a horribly purposeful step towards the people currently making off with its egg.

It lowers its heads. Opens its jaws.

Menahem closes his eyes―

The hydreigon screams.

He opens his eyes again to see an eerie creature like a huge frozen skull floating in from the trees, a thick beam of icy motes pouring from its mouth to rime the hydreigon's limbs with frost. Its mate turns in an instant – but another glalie has emerged, and a machamp, and now Menahem can hear the tramp of marching feet as the legionaries advance.

Thank God.

"Cavalry's arrived," he says, as the hydreigon circle desperately, firing pulses of blue light and blasts of black flame at the approaching monsters. "Go. Before they see the egg."

Scáthach hesitates, just for a moment. Then she nods and vanishes into the night.

Menahem sags against his staff, suddenly exhausted. It's over. Or it isn't – one glalie is already down, and he's sure the hydreigon will take out others before they finally fall. But his part in this is over. The stupid plan kind of worked.

"Hab?" he calls. And she lifts her head, weakly but proudly, and his heart settles back into place inside his chest.

* * *

Another morning at the office. Habassalet is coiled loosely in the corner, now scrubbed of soot and with new patches of moss standing out like stubble on her segments. She hasn't participated in many studies since they got back, but she hasn't shown any sign of wanting to go back to the mountains, either. Menahem quietly suspects that, if and when he gets back on the ship and heads back to warmer climes, she might well insist on coming with him. For now, though, he's content to let her nap in the office while the azurill whose tails he's examining play all around her.

Still, here they are again. And here he is again, too: old Bignose himself, as Scáthach might say. Gaius comes in at the door, his arcanine padding after with his tongue lolling between his teeth.

"Ave, doctor."

"Oh. It's you."

"Who else?" Gaius raises his eyebrows. "May I?"

"Yes, I suppose so." Menahem peels a particularly clingy azurill off his leg and deposits him on the floor, where he immediately scampers over to the arcanine and gets swatted away with one heavy paw. "Hab. Keep an eye on the little buggers."

She opens one eye and flicks her tail in a lazy sort of way that says she might well consider doing that, if he's lucky. Menahem almost smiles, but Gaius is here, and anyway he refuses on principle, so he just nods instead and waves Gaius over into the office.

"How are you?"

"Fine, fine," says Menahem, sitting down. "Hab's doing well."

"And your Briton friend?"

"Well enough." He sniffs haughtily. "She delivered all these azurill yesterday. Trying to make up for the fact that she abandoned me to the mercy of those dragons."

The best lies implicate you. How could Scáthach have been working with him to hide the eggs from the legion, if the two of them have publicly fallen out? If Menahem is a petty, disagreeable old man, and Scáthach a selfish little child? People like that can barely cooperate long enough to ask the time of day, let alone enact a plot to hatch a baby monster.

"Go easy on her," Gaius urges. "I'm sure she just panicked. She might be a barbarian, but she's still just a woman."

Menahem longs to tell him how you tame a decidueye, or how Scáthach pried the tyranitar skull hanging over her fire out of its owner's head, but no. Let the Romans' prejudices work against them.

"Well, perhaps," he says instead. "What's this all about, centurio? You don't come here for the pleasure of my company. Or if you do, you're a moron."

The lines of Gaius' face shift slightly in disappointment. Apparently he still comes round here hoping for something approximating politeness. Idiot.

"I suppose not," he says. "We've recovered the remains of the hydreigon, doctor. It took a while to get it all transported back here; I have to admit that it's a little ripe, but we have it waiting if you'd like to – what's your word? To cut it up, you know, like―"

"Autopsy," interrupts Menahem, feeling his interest quicken despite himself. The black flame suggested they might be dark elementals, but mixing their blood and bone marrow with samples from martial and mind elementals might well confirm it. "Yes, that would be good. Can you deliver it? I'll handle getting rid of it afterwards."

"Good. Of course, anything you can tell us about the beasts …"

"In good time, centurio." Menahem leans on his desk. "Is there anything else?"

"Well." Gaius smiles genially, rests a hand on the head of his arcanine. "Our speculatores conducted a little study of the nest. Some of them are very good woodsmen, you know. I'm sure it didn't escape your notice either, doctor, but there were eggs."

Menahem raises his eyebrows, allows a little gleam to enter his eye. Just as if he was hearing about it for the first time.

"I wondered about that," he says. "I couldn't get close enough to be sure. I don't suppose any survived? Strictly for the sake of natural philosophy, you understand."

Gaius smiles indulgently, like an uncle listening to a favoured nephew proudly repeat the same bare facts once again.

"You and your natural philosophy," he says. "No, sadly. Two were broken in the fight. I was curious, doctor – is that a usual number? For dragons?"

His smile is so warm, and his eyes are so kindly. But Menahem has seen men like this before, and he keeps his heart calcified against their predations.

"Between two and five is normal," he lies, papering his face with scholastic blandness. "These creatures were in a strange land, with strange plants and strange prey. Their bodies were undoubtedly affected; I'm amazed they were healthy enough to produce eggs at all." A careful nod, a calculated movement of his eyebrow. "Are there any fragments? Remnants of hatchlings? I'd like to make sketches, at the very least."

"I'll see what I can do, doctor." Nobody holds a smile this long. Gaius must suspect. "Well then, that's everything." He stands up, holds out a hand for Menahem to shake. "I'll let you get back to work, then."

Menahem stands stiffly to see him out. At the door, Gaius pauses as if remembering something, turns back towards him with that same smile again.

"It's just the eggs," he says. "It's very strange. My speculator swore blind that he could make out the impression of three eggs in that nest. And it's not like him to make a mistake."

Menahem shrugs.

"Perhaps it broke and the fragments mixed with the other two."

"Perhaps," agrees Gaius. "I certainly hope so. The alternative is that perhaps your young friend ran off with it. She did seem to be in a hurry to get away. Tell me, doctor, are you familiar with the Titans?"

"The ancestors of your gods."

Gaius wags a finger.

"That's them. There was one – name of Pandora – do you know the story?"

Is he really going to do this? So trite. But all right, Menahem just needs to get through it.

"Yes, I'm aware," he says patiently. "She was curious. A natural philosopher, you might say. She opened up the box containing the world's ills, just to find out what was inside."

"And doomed us all." Gaius shakes his head. "I hope your friend was able to keep her curiosity in check, doctor. Because if there was a third egg, I wouldn't want to see it open. I'd have to do something about it." He smiles again. Rarely has Menahem wanted to knock out someone's teeth as much as he does right now. "Vale, doctor."

"Hm."

Menahem watches him go for slightly too long. Then he shuts the door and curses softly under his breath. Hab looks up from the corner, dislodging an azurill from the side of her head, and grinds out some sort of questioning growl.

He shakes his head and goes back to his desk, bending down to search beneath it. The box is right where he left it, the wood still warm from the brazier.

He lifts the lid. Sees the blue-black sheen of the egg, nestled deep in a bed of straw.

There's a paperweight on his desk. A good, solid thing. One sharp blow, and this problem goes away forever.

Menahem picks up the paperweight. Considers the heft of it in his hand.

One sharp blow. No more Gaius on his back. Protect Scáthach. And destroy the only remaining hydreigon in Europa.

He sits there for a long time, the paperweight in his hand and the egg by his knees, but he still doesn't know what to do.


End file.
